On March 31, 2022, ACF’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Naomi Goldstein, will retire from federal service.
During her 21-year tenure at ACF and OPRE, Dr. Goldstein’s leadership has significantly advanced research, evaluation, data, and evidence at ACF and across the federal government.
Dr. Goldstein oversaw the expansion of research and evaluation across ACF programs and worked to ensure that new ACF programs would have evidence, evaluation, and data activities planned from their inception. She championed the development of learning agendas, and increased ACF’s capacity to use data for improvement. She led OPRE through a period of tremendous growth in staff, budget, and responsibility, turning it into the “gold standard” for federal evaluation offices. Her work has strengthened ACF as a learning organization.
During Dr. Goldstein’s tenure, the research and evaluation work led by OPRE has had a meaningful impact on ACF programs and policies. When ACF’s Office of Head Start significantly revised its Program Performance Standards, the revisions drew from OPRE research and the recommendations of the OPRE-led Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Head Start Research and Evaluation. Similarly, ACF’s Office of Child Care drew from research and evaluation findings related to eligibility redetermination, continuity of subsidy use, use of funds dedicated to improving the quality of programs, and other information to inform the regulations accompanying the reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant. ACF’s Office of Family Assistance used lessons learned from research and evaluation on the first round of Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) to inform the funding opportunity announcement for the second round of grants. In other ways large and small, the work led by Dr. Goldstein has had a direct impact on ACF programs, and, in turn the children and families that ACF serves.
Beyond ACF and HHS, Dr. Goldstein has been a leader strengthening and elevating evaluation principles and practices across the federal government. When she led the establishment of ACF’s Evaluation Policy in 2012, it was one of the first federal evaluation policies. The five principles of the ACF Evaluation Policy — rigor, relevance, transparency, independence, and ethics — have since been emulated by other federal agencies, and informed both OMB’s evaluation guidance and the HHS evaluation policy. More recently, Dr. Goldstein drafted updates to the evaluation policy to strengthen language related to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Dr. Goldstein wrote in a 2021 blog post about four reasons she loved her job, including the opportunity to create knowledge, the charge to make the world a better place, the responsibility to carry out the laws and serve the people of our country, and the opportunity to collaborate with knowledgeable, kind, and mission driven colleagues. She has certainly accomplished all that and more.
In tributes at a retirement celebration last week, current and former colleagues praised Dr. Goldstein as a “legendary figure,” “an amazing leader in the Federal evaluation community,” “an extraordinary leader and person,” and “a human lighthouse,” who has led OPRE with “effectiveness and empathy.”
Please join the staff of OPRE in congratulating Dr. Naomi Goldstein on a remarkable career in public service and wishing her all the best in her adventures to come.